Hello, and welcome back to Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey mascara.

And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the benefit of practicing short bouts of deep presence.

More to come on that in a moment.

First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so people often ask, you know, how long should I meditate for?

If I have some time throughout the day, how long should it be?

Should I do five minutes?

Should I do two hours?

Should I do one minute?

And it's not that straightforward of a question, because there are some other variables involved.

Namely, what is going to be the quality of presence during that period of meditation?

Because I think you would agree.

There's a difference between sitting down and the mind just wandering aimlessly and you following wherever it goes and getting caught in those thoughts and doing that for an hour versus maybe three minutes.

But you're really attuned to your moment-to-moment experience and you're observing your mind and observing your object of awareness, perhaps a breath.

With a deep presence and focus and monitoring.

Now, that is a very different experience than an hour of aimless mind wandering.

And not that there isn't a role for aimless mind wandering and daydreaming.

But it is different than what we're exploring here, at least when we're cultivating a certain kind of presence.

And so the question then can become, well, which is more valuable?

And this is also a complicated question.

So I'll give you some different layers of responses.

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